Republicans Sow Chaos In Congress | Emily Oster

You're listening to Comedy Central.

From New York City, the only city in America. It's the show that invented news. This is The Daily Show.

With your host Michael Naptor.

Welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Michael Costa. This is my second night hosting two days. I've already lasted longer in New York than Aaron Rodgers. Now we have a great show for you tonight, So let's get into the headlines. Let's get things off with an update on the war in the Middle East is getting worse. The war is escalating, casualties are mounting, but there might be some help on the way. Breaking news right now from the White House to the war zone.

President Biden this evening is leaving Washington for Israel.

With the conflict raging, the risk great. It is highly unusual that the White House would publicly confirm a presidential trip, but Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln, after a seven hour marathon meeting with Israel's Prime minister overnight, made the announcement on Wednesday.

President Biden loses at Israel, and that visit is intended to try to cool things down, to try to ratchet down the tensions somewhat in some way if he can succeed in addition to reaffirming US solidarity with Israel, we'll see how if there's any chance of this being successful.

That's right. President Biden is facing this issue head on and going straight into a war zone. He's flying to Israel tonight, although he's eighty years old, so he did get to the airport two days ago. And I'm proud of Biden for putting himself in harm's way. So let's be honest, Biden doing anything pretty much puts him in harm's way. A rocket strike is dangerous, but so's a bicycle.

Boggie News Chaos on Capitol Hill. The Republican House dysfunction continues as the fight for a new Speaker of the House continues to sputter.

Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio did not even come close to clinching the speakership.

He failed rather ignominiously, to win the gabble on the first ballot.

Jim Jordan has twenty Republicans who decided to vote for someone other than him.

In a few cases they voted for a guy who isn't even in Congress anymore.

Jordan. That's right. A big loss today for Jim Jordan, Ohio Representative and what you get when you photocopy your grandfather's toe too many times. So, as of now, it's been two weeks of Republicans arguing with each other and they still haven't been able to agree on a new speaker, which is a big deal. The Speaker of the House is the person responsible for speaking in the House, so if they don't have one, then nobody is speaking, and it's just so quiet in there. And Congress can't do

The world, the popular YouTube show Hot one surprise mad Pepper scientist Ed Curry with a visit from the Guinness World Records. According to them, the title now belongs to his creation called Pepper X. The heat of a pepper is measured in scoville, So, for example, a halapeno is five thousand scoville units, pepper spray is usually one point six million, and bear spray advertises that two point two million.

But as for pepper X.

Two point six nine to three million scoville heat units.

I was feeling the heat for three and a half hours.

Then the cramps came crabs. Wow, that's a hell of a pepper that gives a man a period. By the way, is pepper X the most creative name they could have come up with? How do you look at this thing and not go with Satan's nutsack? Seriously, though, I love this story because this is what makes humans so great. We're always striving to break barriers that we don't need

Oh yeah, wow, this is so impressive.

What a great use of science.

Our grandparents land on the moon, but we made food hotter to eat.

Okay, I'm not saying it's the biggest deal ever, but I thought it was a nice accomplishment. Yeah for white people.

Maybe I'm from Malaysia. Okay, I've been eating spicy food since I was a baby.

Yo.

My mom had five alam breast milk for nipples, will basically.

To rocha nozzles. Okay, I eat so much spicy food. My driver's license has three peppers on it, like a PF.

Chang's menu.

And that's why I never invite you to dinner, Acosta, because I know you can't handle the heat, and because I don't like you, first of.

All, ouch, and secondly, I don't care how much spicy food you've eaten. This pepper is hotter than bear spray.

Okay, maybe for pussy American bands like Yogi, right, but Asian bads wouldn't flinch. You give this to a panda bad He'd be like, why am I eating this lame mass pepper where I could be busy not having sex?

Come on, dude, this pepper is two point seven million Scoville units.

Come on, Oh my god, two my seven million Scoville units. That's like ten billion dimp shit units or some other scale.

I also just made up. It's all marketing cost of This is why you're five million zis all units, which is a measurement of how much I don't want to have dinner with you, in case you're wondering, and that's the highest you can go.

Ronnie, you're just getting mad at me because maybe a white guy invented a pepper then you can't handle.

Oh please, you think I'm scared of this pepper? I will rub this on my eyeballs and eat it right now.

This cast is us having dinner together. By the way, No it doesn't.

This pepper ain't shit. But Ronnie big girl. Oh my god, Ronnie, Ronnie, you're on fire. No, no, that's not something else. This pepper tastes great. Look I'll eat another one, Ronnie. Don't eat that, Ronnie, do not eat another Ronnie. Johnny Bunny relaxed. Okay, this always happens. I eat something delicious. I'm just gonna go over here right now.

Hey, you get any water because the spice my floats just dry.

I'm fun, you know what. I'm sure he's okay, Ronnie Chang everybody. When we come back, I'll tell you why bees are fish, so don't go away.

Let me.

Also back to the Daily Show.

We all love bending the law, whether it's going five miles over the speed limit or adding five extra children to your tax return. But I found an organization that was bending the law for good. Check it out.

California had successfully turned drugs into medicine and.

Raisins into people, but this time they've gone too far. Bees are now legally considered fish. Bumble bees are now considered fish. Bumble bees fish in the state of California. What the fuck is California up to now?

To find out, I went to meet environmentalists Serena Jepson, who with the conservationist group the Xerxes Society.

Petitioned the state to turn bees into fish. Sena, are bees fish? No?

Bees are not fish?

Okay? Few? I was like so.

Almost certain that they weren't. You don't fish for a bee, you'd be for a bee, right.

These are not fish.

But the California legislature decades ago defined fish to include several different animals, including invertebrates, and bees are unquestionably a type of invertebrate. So, according to California state law, bees are fish.

You just said that bees are not fish and also bees are fish.

Do I look dumb to you?

No, We've just utilized the definitions under the California Indeager Species Act to seek protection for four species of bumblebees that are close to extinction.

And to make things even more confusing, only some bees are now fish.

Bomba soxs in Intallas, the western Bombas sox is of Dallas. Yeah, that's the western.

Franklin's bumblebee, the sucky cuckoo bumble bee.

We can't really say that on TV, but okay, go ahead.

Bombas Crutchia, which is the one that occurs here. That's crutches bumblebee. What's that one called them?

Sorry?

Crutches bumblebee, bumblebee crutch Oh my god?

That in college?

Does it really affect my life that the Borealis occy cock eyed bumblebee is gone?

If we let enough species go extinct and we no longer have a diverse suite of native pollinators, we're going to start seeing problems with pollination of crops and pollination of our native ecosystems.

So calling bees an endangered fish is a way to protect them under California law.

Problem solved, Right. I don't think bees are fish. I knew it. I just don't think that's the case. Next thing, you're gonna tell me that the tomato is a fruit.

As a member of the Almond Alliance of California, Stuart Wolfe sued along with agriculture and pesticide groups to exclude bees from the Endangered Species Act because protecting these bees would hit him right in the nuts.

Whenever you have more risk and you have the possibility of more regulation, then ultimately you have higher costs. There'll be more insects, and there'll be more protections. It will simply grow from here.

I mean, what are they going to protect all invertebrates? Slugs, worms, bears? When does it stop?

Then?

You can't just go changing the names of stuff, even if it benefits you, right right, I'm.

Okay with this whole nut juice being called milk, But call on a bee of fish feels.

Pretty California to me. I can't argue with that. Yeah, yeah, is it milk? Milk? Isn't almond milk milk?

Well, you're talking to an almond grower, and so I believe almond milk there is such a thing. Others like dairyman believe it has to come from a mammal, right, but that again will likely be figured out in the quartz.

In the end, the fate of the bees was decided with the help of a much more resilient and dangerous species.

Lawyers.

Law students Sam Joyce and Professor Matt Sanders at Stanford's Environmental Walklant successfully lawyered the bees into fish.

And I had a pretty good idea.

Why, let's be honest here, who's making the big bucks?

Is it the lawyers?

We represent our clients on a pro bono basis pro bono?

What's that mean? For free? For free?

I've actually been paying money to be here.

You actually paid money to call bees fish? And this is the problem with today's campuses and universities.

So these suckers fought a legal battle to save the bees just.

Because they love the environment. Okay, but how did they pull that off?

Explain to me how the bees are fish?

With the California Fishing Game Code, Section forty five defined fish and it says that the fish is a wildfish or a crustacean or a mollusk, or an invertebrate or an amphibian. Okay, bees are invertebrates, so bees fall within the definition of fish in this law.

This is like Christians, you know, finding a way to have sex before they're merrit you know, hand.

Stuff, or that this is a legal loophole, right, Come on?

If anything, the loophole here is trying to play on the definitions or the terms within the Endangered Species Act and say sorry, this can cover plants, it can cover other animals, but it can't cover insects. That sounds like a loophole.

I guess with legal advice, you really get what you pay for. And with that, I'd study the issue from almost every angle except the most impolute. Okay, So I think I get it.

It doesn't matter if bees are fish or fish or bees.

Those are just.

Labels and everything deserves a right to exist and to pollinate and to reproduce and be happy.

That's what this is about. More or less, Yes, I think I get it, So thank you and beautiful.

Sorry, one more thing, so.

Are bees fish?

No?

And welcome back to economist Emily.

Osterer will explain how data to make your bet parents don't go away.

Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight is an economist at Brown University an author of several books on data driven parenting. Please welcome Emily Oster.

Hello.

All right, exciting, huh, I'm excited data and parenting, babies and babies. Yeah, I mean what does parent data means? There's data on parents?

Yes, there is data on parents, and I am a firm believer that data is the key to making your parenting easier and happier and more relaxed.

Are you very relaxed? Oh right, now, very relaxed. But you've actually made our family more relaxed because some of the data some clip somewhere might have even been in this book Expecting Better, which maybe ten year anniversary now this book, Wow amazing. I'm paraphrasing, but it was. There's two preschools or two daycares. They're both of equal credible value. Which one should I go to as a parent? And your answer was go to the one that's closest to your house.

Yeah.

So for me, that's really a momentic of what I think is hard and often overthought about parenting is we have this idea that like there's a right way to do it, there's a correct daycare, and you can really get down the rabbit hole. While these teachers have this, qualifications and this, and in the end of the day, there are a lot of right ways to do this, and those kind of considerations are most of the time so much less important than what works for your family

Our daycare doesn't have room for a stroller, so I push the stroller there. Then I fold the stroller up and I lock it to a telephone pole outside, and then my wife, who picks up, has to unlock the stroll. I mean, this is like and I'm a celebrity, you know what I mean. This is what it's like in New York City. But data parenting is nice. It's I like the term. It sounds good. But when my three year old is punching me in the face on Father's Day for the three times that day and I'm about

Some problems for which data isn't necessarily going to fix the problem. But I think there's another piece of data in parenting, and I think this is really true that like we can use data to feel less alone. And that's like part of parenting is hard, right, your kids hitting you in the face. It's painful, it hurts. Yeah, it's painful.

It doesn't matter how they are.

But what the data will tell you is that one hundred percent of kids hit and the one hundred percent of them kids hit their dad. And so you're not alone because one hundred percent of other people were also hit on Father's Day. And in some sense, like I think that that tells us that we're doing okay, there's nothing wrong with your kid. They just hit sometimes.

Where is this data coming from? Certainly, it's like a very yeah, okay, okay, so certain.

So data comes from a lot of places. Actually, when I teach I'm an economists, they teach it brown. One of the big things I teach people is like, where does data come from? And the answer is it comes from surveys, we ask people, and data has its limitations. We don't always ask the most representative set of people, and we don't always analyze it in the ways that

Are let's start with pregnant women. Are are we in a time where there's more fear associated with eating sushi drinking alcohol? Or has it always been this fear? And here comes Professor Auster to offer these guidelines that help us. I mean, are you a product of there being an excess amount of fear? Now?

Fundamentally yes, I mean I think you know, if you will get the broad swath of history, you know certainly there are you know, medieval times, we were not concerned about sushi. That wasn't like the primary worry of it's sushi, the plague the plague, and then sushi was low on the list. But I do think in the last you know, fifteen twenty, maybe thirty years, there has become this culture of kind of achievement in parenting and the idea that

Well, because if you're creating this world, everything has to be perfect, and invariably something will go wrong and that creates stress, which stress gill be good.

And it's not just stress. I mean I think there's a stress piece, and then there's a guilt piece. There's a feeling of like, if anything goes wrong, it's because of something you did. And it's hard to recognize that sometimes things go wrong for reasons that are not something we did. But that's actually pretty important thing to recognize if you want to be able to move forward.

I did a little bit of my own data research.

Wonderful okay, like Kyrie Irving.

Because it was driving me crazy during both my wife's pregnancies, how every doctor, everyone we said was like, you can't eat a deli meat, don't eat a turkey sandwich, you can't eat because of listeria. This was the big thing. And I know you talk about listeria in here, but so I said, Okay, I'm curious how many pregnant women

So I think I want to separate a little bit unpack I mean lots on pack in your analysis. I mean, I think one thing that is that is true is that many of the risks that we worry about are very small. And I use the car accident risk very often because I think it's an example of a risk that we're taking all the time, and for good reason. I wouldn't tell people not to get in a car, but just to recognize life contains a background level of risk.

Isn't it's easy to skip that. It's easy to skip that.

But as we think about things that are harder to skip, you do want to get into, like, well, actually, is this really an important risk relative to many of the other risks I'm taking every day, like getting.

In a car.

Yeah. I didn't realize how much my parent parenting me was going to turn me. Excuse me. I thought I would parent differently. I had great parents, but I thought I would do things differently. Am I Are we just doomed? And there is there data on this?

Okay, there is data on some There are some things you probably do do differently and so and sometimes because we've advanced our data, you know, you probably put your baby sleep on their back, and your parents probably put you to sleep on your stomach because we learn more

But probably you're an economist, your husband's an economist. Are your kids like, don't hit your brother? But what's the data on that?

Mom?

Like, my kids could not be less interest in economics or my parenting work.

You know. It's one of the.

Great things about being a parenting expert is that you can say that a lot at home, like I'm a parenting but they don't think that at all.

Your new book, it's coming out. You can pre order it. What is your new book about.

The new book is called The Unexpected and it is about navigating pregnancy after complications. So for about fifty percent of pregnancies, they end with in a complication, a loss or preclamcy or something. And the book is really an attempt to help people work through in a later pregnancy how to avoid those complications. What you can do about them and how to navigate conversations with your provider. So that's the idea.

Okay, great. One of the things I read that you said that I really enjoyed was studies say versus all studies say, do you know what I'm talking about?

I do, because studies always show. So when people tell me this study, a studies study show. Studies always show. Studies show everything. Everything can be shown in a study, the question is often what does the bulk of the evidence say? Because when we look at most of the problems in this book, in all of the space of pregnancy and parenting, there's almost always many different pieces of

I mean you can find anything on the internet. Yes, It's like you can Google and find your support. So is how can parents the kids crying, or you got punch in the face on Father's Day, or you can't eat Deli meats? Where do we go?

So I would like people to go to parent data dot org, which is the website where we put together sort of the whole broad range of the stuff I've written in these books and then in my newsletter about what the data says about many of these kind of questions. And I think it's part of a general effort to basically, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, why is my kids poop this color?

All the non parents are like, Jesus Christ, what's wrong with Is there any data on the sectimes?

V sectames are amazing option? Okay, the sectimes are a great form of birth control, and they're an outpatient procedure. You just need a little ice back down there and it works great, So it's worth considering.

Thank you for chatting with us. Sorry that was my last question. Be sure to check out Emily's Parent Data podcast and The Unexpected is available for pre order. We're gonna take a quick break, be right back after this. That's our show for you tonight. Before we go, please consider donating to Angela Hospice and Lavonia, Michigan. Since nineteen eighty five, Angela Hospice has been providing a crucial service to the community of southeast Michigan. Also, my sister works

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcast. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven ten Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus.

This has been a Comedy Central podcast now